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Operation RoundPress targeting high-value webmail servers


This blogpost introduces an operation that we named RoundPress, targeting high-value webmail servers with XSS vulnerabilities, and that we assess with medium confidence is run by the Sednit cyberespionage group. The ultimate goal of this operation is to steal confidential data from specific email accounts.

Key points of this blogpost:

  • In Operation RoundPress, the compromise vector is a spearphishing email leveraging an XSS vulnerability to inject malicious JavaScript code into the victim’s webmail page.
  • In 2023, Operation RoundPress only targeted Roundcube, but in 2024 it expanded to other webmail software including Horde, MDaemon, and Zimbra.
  • For MDaemon, Sednit used a zero-day XSS vulnerability. We reported the vulnerability to the developers on November 1st, 2024 and it was patched in version 24.5.1.
  • Most victims are governmental entities and defense companies in Eastern Europe, although we have observed governments in Africa, Europe, and South America being targeted as well.
  • We provide an analysis of the JavaScript payloads SpyPress.HORDE, SpyPress.MDAEMON, SpyPress.ROUNDCUBE, and SpyPress.ZIMBRA.
  • These payloads are able to steal webmail credentials, and exfiltrate contacts and email messages from the victim’s mailbox.
  • Additionally, SpyPress.MDAEMON is able to set up a bypass for two-factor authentication.

Sednit profile

The Sednit group – also known as APT28, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, or Sofacy – has been operating since at least 2004. The US Department of Justice named the group as one of those responsible for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack just before the 2016 US elections and linked the group to the GRU. The group is also presumed to be behind the hacking of global television network TV5Monde, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) email leak, and many other incidents. Sednit has a diversified set of malware tools in its arsenal, several examples of which we have documented previously in our Sednit white paper from 2016.

Links to Sednit

On September 29th, 2023, we detected a spearphishing email, part of Operation RoundPress, sent from katecohen1984@portugalmail[.]pt (envelope-from address). The email exploited CVE‑2023‑43770 in Roundcube. This email address is very similar to the ones used in other Sednit campaigns in 2023, as documented by Unit42 for example.

Leveraging a network scan we ran in February 2022, we found the server 45.138.87[.]250 / ceriossl[.]info, which was configured in the same unique way as 77.243.181[.]238 / global-world-news[.]net. The former was mentioned in a Qianxin blogpost describing a campaign abusing CVE-2023-23397 that attributed it to Sednit. The latter is a domain used in Operation RoundPress in 2023.

Given these two elements, we believe with medium confidence that Operation RoundPress is carried out by Sednit.

Victimology

Table 1 and Figure 1 detail targets of Operation RoundPress in 2024, from ESET telemetry and two samples on VirusTotal.

Most of the targets are related to the current war in Ukraine; they are either Ukrainian governmental entities or defense companies in Bulgaria and Romania. Notably, some of these defense companies are producing Soviet-era weapons to be sent to Ukraine.

Other targets include African, EU, and South American governments.

Table 1. Operation RoundPress victims in 2024

Date Country Sector
2024-05 Greece National government.
Romania Unknown (VirusTotal submission).
Ukraine Specialized Prosecutor’s Office in the Field of Defense of the Western Region (VirusTotal submission).
2024-06 Bulgaria Telecommunications for the defense sector.
Cameroon National government.
Ukraine Military.
2024-07 Ecuador Military.
Ukraine Regional government.
Serbia National government.
2024-09 Cyprus An academic in environmental studies.
Romania Defense company.
Ukraine Military.
2024-10 Bulgaria Defense company.
2024-11 Bulgaria Defense company (not the same as in 2024-10).
Ukraine Civil air transport company.
Defense company.
2024-12 Ukraine State company in the transportation sector.
Figure 1. Map of Operation RoundPress victims in 2024
Figure 1. Map of operation RoundPress victims in 2024

Compromise chain

Initial access

In 2023, Sednit was exploiting CVE-2020-35730, a known XSS vulnerability in Roundcube (see this CERT-UA blogpost and this Recorded Future report), which enables the loading of arbitrary JavaScript code in the context of the webmail window.

In 2024, we observed different XSS vulnerabilities being used to target additional webmail software: Horde, MDaemon, and Zimbra. Sednit also started to use a more recent vulnerability in Roundcube, CVE-2023-43770. The MDaemon vulnerability (CVE-2024-11182, now patched) was a zero day, most likely discovered by Sednit, while the ones for Horde, Roundcube, and Zimbra were already known and patched.

Sednit sends these XSS exploits by email. The exploits lead to the execution of malicious JavaScript code in the context of the webmail client web page running in a browser window. Therefore, only data accessible from the victim’s account can be read and exfiltrated.

Note that, in order for the exploit to work, the target must be convinced to open the email message in the vulnerable webmail portal. This means that the email needs to bypass any spam filtering and the subject line needs to be convincing enough to entice the target into reading the email message.

Figure 2 summarizes the compromise chain used in Operation RoundPress.

Figure 2. Operation RoundPress compromise chain
Figure 2. Operation RoundPress compromise chain

Generally, the email message looks benign and contains text about news events. For example, on September 11th, 2024, a Ukrainian target received a phishing email from kyivinfo24@ukr[.]net with the subject СБУ схопила банкіра, який працював на ворожу воєнну розвідку в Харкові (machine translation: SBU arrested a banker who worked for enemy military intelligence in Kharkiv). The message body – see Figure 3 – contains excerpts (in Ukrainian) and links to articles from Kyiv Post, a well-known newspaper in Ukraine. The malicious code that triggers the XSS vulnerability is inside the HTML code of the email message’s body and is not directly visible to the user.

Figure 3. Malicious email message sent by Sednit
Figure 3. Malicious email message sent by Sednit

Another example is an email from office@terembg[.]com to a Bulgarian target on November 8th, 2024, with the subject Путин се стреми Тръмп да приеме руските условия вдвустранните отношения (machine translation: Putin seeks Trump’s acceptance of Russian conditions in bilateral relations). The message body – see Figure 4 – again contains excerpts (in Bulgarian) and links to articles from News.bg, a legitimate Bulgarian newspaper.

Figure 4. Another malicious email sent by Sednit
Figure 4. Another malicious email sent by Sednit

Note that some of these vulnerabilities are not of interest exclusively to this group: GreenCube (also known as UNC3707) and Winter Vivern have been exploiting them as well.

Horde: Unknown exploit

For targets using Horde webmail, we have seen Sednit using an old vulnerability. We were unable to find the exact vulnerability, but it appears to be an XSS flaw that was already fixed in the first version of Xss.php committed to GitHub, and in Horde Webmail 1.0, which was released in 2007.

The intended exploit used by Sednit is shown in Figure 5. Placing malicious JavaScript code in the onerror attribute of an img element is a technique taken straight from the XSS playbook: because the src attribute is x, an undefined value, onerror is called and the payload is base64 decoded and then evaluated using window.parent.eval.

Figure 5. Horde webmail exploit
Figure 5. Horde webmail exploit

In Horde Webmail version 1.0, the XSS filter removes the style elements and the on* attributes, such as onerror. Thus, we believe that Sednit made a mistake and tried to use a nonworking exploit.

MDaemon: CVE-2024-11182

On November 1st, 2024, we detected an email message sent to two Ukrainian state-owned defense companies and a Ukrainian civil air transport company.

This message exploited a zero-day XSS vulnerability in MDaemon Email Server, in the rendering of untrusted HTML code in email messages. We reported the vulnerability to the developers on November 1st, 2024 and it was patched in version 24.5.1, which was released on November 14th, 2024; we then issued CVE-2024-11182 for it.

The exploit used by Sednit is shown in Figure 6. Just as for Horde, it relies on a specially crafted img element, but uses a bug in the MDaemon HTML parser where a noembed end tag inserted within the title attribute of a p element tricks the parser into rendering the immediately succeeding img tag.

Figure 6. Exploit for CVE-2024-11182 in MDaemon
Figure 6. Exploit for CVE-2024-11182 in MDaemon

Roundcube: CVE-2023-43770

For targets using Roundcube webmail: in 2023, Sednit used the XSS vulnerability CVE‑2020‑35730, while in 2024, it switched to CVE-2023-43770.

The more recent vulnerability was patched on September 14th, 2023 in this GitHub commit. The fix is in a regex in the rcube_string_replacer.php script. The exploit used by Sednit is quite simple and is depicted in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Exploit for CVE-2023-43770 in Roundcube
Figure 7. Exploit for CVE-2023-43770 in Roundcube

In rcube_string_replacer.php, URLs are converted to hyperlinks, and the hyperlink text is what is expected to be provided between the outer set of square brackets. The bug lies in the fact that the hyperlink text is not properly sanitized, allowing the characters < and >. This enables an attacker to provide JavaScript code contained between

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